The 2016 Australian Directors Guild Awards reveals nominees; winners announced May 6

In a year when gender equality is a focus of the Australian screen industry more than a third of nominees in the 2016 Australian Directors Guild Awards are women. Two of the four nominees in the Best Direction in a Feature Film category are women and all five films in the Best Documentary Feature category were directed or co-directed by female filmmakers.

The ADG announced all nominations for the 2016 Awards this morning. The
prestigious awards celebrate the outstanding work of Australian screen
directors over the past year and the winners will be announced at a
ceremony in Melbourne on Friday 6 May.

The Australian Directors Guild was thrilled to receive more entries for
2016 than ever before and this year's awards will be presented across 16
categories including film, television, animation, multiplatform, music
and advertising. This year's judges noted that entries in the categories
of Best Student Film and Best Short Film have been particularly strong
and encouragingly three of the four Student nominations and three of the
five Short Film nominees are female.

The nominees for Best
Direction in a Feature Film are Sue Brooks for Looking for Grace,
Jocelyn Moorhouse for The Dressmaker and Bentley Dean & Martin
Butler for Tanna. This year there are five nominations for Best Feature
Documentary and four of the five features were directed or co-directed
by female filmmakers. They are Nick Bird & Eleanor Sharpe for
Remembering The Man, Jennifer Peedom for Sherpa, Margot Nash for The
Silences, Stefan Moore and Susan Lambert for Tyke Elephant Outlaw and
Lisa Nicol for Wide Open Sky.

Nominations in all the TV
categories indicate another solid year for television in Australia. TV
Drama Series nominees are Emma Freeman for Glitch: Series 1, Ep1, Fiona
Banks for The Dr. Blake Mysteries: Series 3, Ep3, Kevin Carlin for
Wentworth: Series 3, Ep1, along with Jeffrey Walker forBanished: Series
1, Ep7 and Shawn Seet for Love Child: Series 2, Ep 3, both 2015 Award
winners.

Shawn Seet receives a second nomination in the TV Mini
Series category for his work on Peter Allen - Not The Boy Next Door
(Ep1). He is nominated alongside Michael Rymer for Deadline Gallipoli
(Ep1), Peter Salmon for The Beautiful Lie (Ep6) and Kriv Stenders for
The Principal (Ep1).

House of Hancock, Mary - The Making of a
Princess and Redfern Now - Promise Me are all nominated in the Telemovie
category for Mark Joffe, Jennifer Leacey and Rachel Perkins
respectively.

The ADG Awards present three awards to Documentary
Directors. In addition to Best Feature Documentary there is Documentary
Series and Documentary Stand Alone. Nominees for a Documentary Series
are Ivan O'Mahoney (Hitting Home Ep1), Cian O'Clery (Changing Minds: The
Inside Story, Series 2, Ep2), Madeleine Parry (The Maddie Parry Series,
Ep2 Brothel Hostess) and Sally Aitken (The Great Australian Race Riot,
Ep1).